Volunteering

I picked up a new gig.  I'm now volunteering at The Heritage Center in addition to teaching yoga there every other week. I had thought about it for quite some time and decided that it was now or never.  

What made me decided to volunteer more time?  

When I go there to teach yoga, the residents don't want to leave after our session.  They like to talk to me and ask me questions about what I do (my work at the prison), my family, what is going on downtown, how I've been feeling.  They're lonely and they like interaction with people from the outside (not staff members).

I've come to know several of them and some of them I already knew.  There is Harry, who used to be my bus driver when I was little.  Harold, who is my brother-in-law's brother.  There is Bobbie, who was friends with my mom and dad and whose farm was just 2.5 miles from my family farm. 

Saturday was my first day helping some of the residents.  I loaded up my laptop and visited with two of them, helping them to write their Christmas letters.  It was quite interesting and fun to learn about their lives and what fills there days. 

I was right when I surmised that they didn't have a lot of visitors or outside interaction.  They talked about going down to eat three times a day then sitting in their apartments most of the time, watching TV or reading.  No wonder they like to visit with me when I come and do yoga with them. 

I'll be going back on Friday to help them address their cards/envelopes.   One of them asked if I could help them write out their bills and insisted that I take some chocolate bars for spending time with him.  How sweet!

As I was leaving there were a bunch of ladies having coffee, so I sat and visited with them.  I learned one of them was a Ukestad from Montpelier and the other was Doris Rode from Adrian.   Again more connections.   It's as if the universe is telling me I need to do this.

I can't help but think....I hope that when I'm old and lonely, will someone volunteer and come see me and help me?

Relaxing

I love my Sundays.  It's generally the one day of the week that I try not to schedule anything.  I like to roll with it and see where the day takes me. 

Sometimes I sit in my recliner and watch the morning news shows.  Sometimes I clean house if I didn't get a chance to do it on Saturday.  Sometimes I find my guy, Blaine, and spend time with him.

Today I compromised....I cleaned house...after I watched the morning new shows.  Then I headed in to town to have lunch with my friend Becky at the new Mexican restaurant in town.  She works at a bank now and we see each other even less than when we were working at the same facility.

The food was awesome and the company great.  It was good to connect with her and to share some face time. 

I went up to Wal-Mart after that with the intent of doing a little shopping but my heart just wasn't in it.  I took a little drive around town and listened to some tunes on the radio.  I love to drive and listen to music.  It soothes the soul and lifts me up.  I thought about driving to Valley City to pick up a pizza for supper, but I thought that was a little extreme.  So after a while I  came home and did some laundry and started preparing for the week ahead.

I work Monday through Wednesday this week.  I packed my yoga bag for Monday night and my gym bag for Tuesday and Wednesday night with my trainer.  (I don't have yoga Wednesday night).

Right now I'm sitting with my feet up, relaxing and watching the movie Joyful Noise as I type this blog entry.  It's a pretty good movie with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton.  The music is quite good and the message is awesome.....it's a movie about having faith and letting everything work out as it's meant to happen. 

This is one of the songs from the movie.  I absolutely love the way they sing it.  They took a Beatles song and brought in to a Gospel song format. 
Maybe I'm Amazed (song clip from Joyful Noise)

So, I'm relaxing and hoping that the upcoming week goes better than the last week.  :)

What A Week

This was my first week back to work after being on vacation.  I was busy the week before vacation getting ready for vacation so that I wouldn't have so much to do when I got back.   No such luck.  I hit the ground running on Monday morning and literally did not stop until 4:30pm today.   I hate it when that happens.

It also didn't help that a very close friend of mine is experiencing personal issues.  I feel helpless in that I cannot help them.  I feel their stress, uncertainty and frustration. I worry about them - their emotional and physical well being as well.   I cannot fathom what must be going through their head right now, but want them to know that I care and will always be here for them not matter what.  

One positive note:

 I attempted and completed the Turkey Challenge at Anytime Fitness on Thursday night.  This consisted of five rounds of each of these:
Dead Lifts (12 reps)  at 80% of my body weight
Bent Rows (10 reps) at 50% of my body weight
Burpee w/tuck jumps (5 reps)
Sit-up on decline bench - 15, 12,10,8,6
Roll-out pushup on pilates ball - 10 reps
Kettle Bell Swing - 20lbs (10 reps)
Squat (10 reps) at 85% of my body weight. - this one gave me a bit of a problem.  I got the bar on my shoulders, squatted and couldn't push back up.  In fact, I pretty much fell forward with the weight bar on my shoulders.  Thank goodness for the bar guards! lol  I was pissed off and mortified at the same time.  Pissed that I couldn't do it and mortified because people saw me.  My trainer just smiled and adjusted the bar to 50% of my body weight and told me that it happens to every serious lifter at some point or another.

Anyways, I completed the challenge in 37:02!   I was the 2nd person to complete it and the 1st female to complete it.  Yay me!  I was walking 10 ft tall when I left. 

Agenda for the weekend?  Tomorrow is the normal Saturday stuff.  Mother-in-law grocery shopping and lunch from 10:30 till about 12:30 then off to the Heritage Center (independent living at Ava Maria) to help a couple of the residents write their Christmas letters at 1:00. This is my volunteer effort beyond that of yoga teacher.  It should be fun and I'm looking forward to it. It's something that I've wanted to do for a while - do more volunteering - and this will definitely get me started. 

After that - the gym and home to clean house.   As usual, a jam packed day and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Night blogland :)

The Small Things Make Me Smile

1) On the way in to town this morning, I was greeted by the sight of three deer standing quietly in a field about a 1/4 mile away from highway 281N.  They apparently were not worried that it was weekend #2 of deer hunting season and a carload of hunters had just passed us.
2) One of my yoga students, Mike, bringing me OJ to make up for the OJ I didn't have on hand at my yoga retreat. :)
3) My mother-in-law's smile and laughter when she's having a good day
4) A pedicure
5) A beautiful morning - quiet, serene, brisk and exhilarating
6) Having a random encounter with someone and sharing a good laugh with them. (Now I wish I'd gotten their name)
7) Sitting in a restaurant booth and having a cute little boy toddler flirt with me.
8) Hearing a good song, not knowing the artist who sings it, then realizing that my great new app called Soundhound can find that information.  FYI: "Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti &  Spearhead
9) Hearing from a friend that has moved away - who just called to tell me he's doing ok.
10) A warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie.

Vacation

I am officially on vacation.  Yay.  Not a very enthusiastic "yay" was it?

For most people, being on vacation means going some where fun and exciting or having fun things to do.   Me?  I use my vacation days to tackle projects that I normally do not get a chance to do due to my hectic work, yoga and gym schedules.

I have 3 projects I want to accomplish on my days off.  I feel like I should have relatively good success in tackling these projects if I

1) Stay on my sleep/wake schedule and do not stay up until all hours of the night and sleep in just because "I can."
2) Limit my Today Show viewing and coffee drinking to 1 hr..maximum. 
3) Shower and dress for the day as if I were going to work...which, in essence, I am...just not to the office as normal
4) Put on some kick ass music
5) Focus on THE project of the day and ONLY that project.  We (my sisters and I), tend to take detours in our cleaning.  You know...the find an object that belongs in another, take it to the other room, then see something in that room that needs cleaning.  Only to return to the original room in progress two hours later.  (Don't laugh...we're women, we ALL do that!  Don't we?)
6)   Let go of my procrastinating perfectionistic tendencies and realize that I will not get everything finished in my daily project and that I can let it go and come back to it in the morning. .  And that's OK.
7) Applaud myself for what I've accomplished so far and reward myself with something fun and indulgent at some point in my days off.

So you may ask, how's it going so far?  Good.  The worst and I do mean, The. WORST. room of the house has been tackled.  I am no longer afraid to open the door and gaze upon the vision that greets me.  Although I did not tackle the closet, everything else appears neat and orderly. 

I have far too much stuff in this small house.  A blessing in that I live in abundance and a curse in that I live in abundance.  I think 90% of us could say the same thing.   I  look at the news reports of the people in the Philippines or even Haiti after  the devastating natural disasters and I think to myself, "I am so lucky."

So, I am going to start making it a personal goal to purge and downsize.  It may take me a while  and may only do a few objects at a time, but it's time to let go of the stuff.